Times Up!
Welcome one and all! This is Captain Red Zone coming to you with yet another deck for your viewing delight. This week I’m bringing to you the first of my dual colored Commander theme decks! That’s right,the poll is done and I will start with the highest rated to the lowest. There’s just one problem. A lot of the decks tied for the spots they’re in! No biggie, I’ll just start with the top of the list and move on to the next deck with the same amount of votes until I hit them all. With that in mind, this week we’re going Red/Green! So let’s get this show on the road!
Let’s Do This!
So what does Red and Green have in common? Well for one, they both have Trample. It’s one of the only ‘evergreen’ effects the two share. For those who don’t know, ‘evergreen’ is a term for an ability or effect used so much in Magic that it shows ups in just about every set. Other ones are flying, haste, and vigilance. They usually don’t have reminder text explaining how they work, outside of a core set, because they’re so easy to remember. Trample is when a creature is so big that when it attacks and deals combat damage to a creature, any extra damage it can deal gets dealt to that creature’s controller. Think of it like an elephant running your way and your dog gets between you and it. It will stomp your dog and then stomp you. But if say you had a pet elephant, they would bump heads and the chances of you getting stomped drop down into not likely territory.
Welcome one and all! This is Captain Red Zone coming to you with yet another deck for your viewing delight. This week I’m bringing to you the first of my dual colored Commander theme decks! That’s right,the poll is done and I will start with the highest rated to the lowest. There’s just one problem. A lot of the decks tied for the spots they’re in! No biggie, I’ll just start with the top of the list and move on to the next deck with the same amount of votes until I hit them all. With that in mind, this week we’re going Red/Green! So let’s get this show on the road!
Let’s Do This!
So what does Red and Green have in common? Well for one, they both have Trample. It’s one of the only ‘evergreen’ effects the two share. For those who don’t know, ‘evergreen’ is a term for an ability or effect used so much in Magic that it shows ups in just about every set. Other ones are flying, haste, and vigilance. They usually don’t have reminder text explaining how they work, outside of a core set, because they’re so easy to remember. Trample is when a creature is so big that when it attacks and deals combat damage to a creature, any extra damage it can deal gets dealt to that creature’s controller. Think of it like an elephant running your way and your dog gets between you and it. It will stomp your dog and then stomp you. But if say you had a pet elephant, they would bump heads and the chances of you getting stomped drop down into not likely territory.
Now that we have a theme to focus on, I would like to point out what gave me the idea for this deck. I owe it all to a man who goes by the name of Leeroy. You see, Leeroy was never one for planning. There is another popular game out there that goes by the name of World of Warcraft. This is where Leeroy lives and I would like to take moment and let you see one of his most famous quests. Here is the link.
You see Leeroy Jenkins is not one to pussy foot around danger. His level maybe low, noob-like even, but he has more bravery and testicular fortitude then a man with elephantiasis. Don’t google that, and if you do don’t go telling your mom The Captain made me do it.
So this deck is about the creatures that don’t care about sitting in a circle and pondering the meaning of life while drinking tea on a giant blanket with pictures of flowers in the basement of some club, snapping their figures and singing “Cum Bi Yah”, or however that crap is spelled!!! HELL NO! TO HELL WITH THAT CRAP! We may be outnumbered and flat out gunned but we have anger on our side! We’re going out there to kick some names and take some ass!... or is that the other way around?… Never mind! We don’t have time to think of the small stuff like that!
So we’re going to need two things for this deck to feel like a real Red/Green deck: 1) Creatures with Trample and/or 2) Creatures with Haste. We also need a Commander that knows what it means to go for it and stomp a hole in someone so deep you can see through him. So this week I’m putting my faith in Stonebrow, Krosan Hero.
He will make sure our guys get that extra pump needed to get it done… whatever IT maybe. So now that we got our leader, let’s get some troops!
LLEEEERROOYY!
So let’s get some guys with trample in here. They don’t have to be big because we can always pump them later. So let’s start with…
Ball Lightning, Blitz Hellion, Blistering Firecat, Branchsnap Lorian, Bull Aurochs, Krosan Avenger, and Scuzzback Marauders: This is our group of I’m-Taking-You-With-Me dudes. These guys have small defense numbers, like 1 or 2, but the make up for it in attack with numbers ranging from 3 to 7. Our opponent is going to feel like a genius when he put a 1/1 token in front of these because their token killed your real card. But the jokes on them when they realize they took 5 or 6 point of damage and lost a dude to a card that was going to die at the end of the turn anyway. A few cards like Ball Lighting and Bistering Firecat may seem like bad usage of card space and damage, but we’ll get to that a little later. Just remember these guy are going to attack ASAP and some will stick around a few turns to keep putting pressure on your opponents.
Boartusk Liege, Bramblesnap, Borborygmos, Deus of Calamity, Kavu Predator, Phantom Nantuko, Scab-Clan Mauler, Shivan Wurm, Skinshifter, and Talara’s Battalion: These are our other, more permanent, tramplers. They also come with a few tricks like pumping our team, pumping themselves, or destroying lands. We even have Skinshifter for a wall and a flyer if needed.
So with our tramplers out the way, we now need to give them haste so they can start ripping our opponents apart as soon as we get them out.
Anger, Boggart Ram-Gang, Crimson Mage, Goblin Bushwhacker, Rakka Mar, and Urabrask the Hidden: These will give our guys the energy to run into the battlefield guns blazing! And if they can’t get the team running they hit the track themselves. Anger, Crimson Mage, and Urabrask are great at this by giving every creature you control Haste while Goblin Bushwhacker does it for the turn and gives a +1/+0 bonus. Rakka Mar is a little different because she brings her own team but just remember her 3/1 elementals don’t sacrifice themselves at the end of the turn. Boggart Ram-Gang doesn’t do much for the team but a 3/3 with Wither is nothing to look down on, especially if we pump it up a bit.
Barishi, Eternal Witness, Hua Tuo, Honored Physician, Genesis, and Loaming Shaman: These guys are the one who will help us get back our dudes, one way or another. Most of these will shuffle them back into the deck, but I would like to take this moment to get up on my soap box. I understand that Wizards have certain reasons to not include certain cards in their upcoming From the Vault: Legends, but I for one think Hua Tuo, Honored Physician should have be one of them. He’s one of, if not the, only creatures that has this ability in Magic and I feel its something green should have more of. I’m just saying they could have left some of the more recent legends out for a later release and used this one to bring in a few more of the older guys. Don’t judge me!
Brawn and Roughshod Mentor: These two give our non-trample guys Trample, helping to make
every creature we play get the extra +2/+2 from our General.
Bloom Tender, Dragon Broodmother, Dwarven Blastminer, Dwarven Miner, Firebrand Ranger, Gruul Guildmage, Horned Kavu, Quirion Elves, Radha, Heir to Keld, Skarrgan Skybreaker, Tattermunge Witch, Ulasht, the Hate Seed, Valley Rannet, and Vexing Shusher: These are our the fillers for the deck. They do everything from extra mana to pump to land destruction. Some make tokens like Dragons and Saprolings and some like Horned Kavu can bounce creatures back to our hand which can be helpful with our Ball Lighting and its friends. There are a few other effects like making spells uncounterable, but those are for the more corner cases.
JJEENNKKIINNSSS!
Now with our guys out of the way we move on to the other stuff that will help us finish off our deck and opponents.
Sword of the Paruns and Thran Foundry: These are our only two artifacts so I figured we should start here. The sword is simple: Put it on a dude and when he attacks, he attacks like our Commander by giving all attacking creature a +2/+0 bonus and a +0/+2 bonus to all that don’t attack if he doesn’t attack as well. Thran Foundry is a way to get our graveyard back but also can stop graveyard based deck by putting their graveyard back instead. This is a one shot deal so make it count.
Beastmaster Ascension, Emblem of the Warmind, Fervor, Fires of Yavimaya, Gaea’s Anthem, and Primal Rage: What’s better then creatures? Bigger creatures! Gaea’s Anthem and Beastmaster Ascension are the additional pump echantments that will make all that trample put fear into your opponents. The additional haste with Emblem of the Warmind, Fevor, and Fires of Yavimaya will help make that pump even more dangerous. Also the additional trample with Primal Rage should help our non-tramplers get them a piece too. I mean hey they didn’t show up to WATCH a beatdown!
Regrowth, Recollect, Praetor’s Counsel, and Primal Command: More ways to get back any fallen creatures. Also, backed with the various choices in the Command, we get a little removal, life gain and creature search going.
Garruk Wildspeaker, Garruk, Primal Hunter, and Sarkhan Vol: These 3 bring some serious help. First, Lil’ Garruk bring us mana for our spells, trample with a +3/+3 bonus, and a few 3/3 beast to help block and attack. Big G brings card draw, more beast, and wurms. I got to say, using Big G to draw cards during the 2nd main phase AFTER Stonebrow pumps our guys could easily draw you 7, 9, or more cards! Sarkhan gives +1/+1 with haste, steals dudes, and can make some dragons in case of emergency. More ways to pump dudes, give out haste, make big dudes, and trample. I can’t say no to that.
Insurrection: This is one of Red’s biggest game ender and it works so well here that I gave up my Ghostly Prison type card spot for it.
At Least I Have Chicken!
From here we put in 19 Forests and 19 Mountains and we are off to stomp and smash face! Like I always advise, play around with your mana base here. I’m sure you can find more lands that will give out pumps, trample, haste or other cool things like doublestrike. Well that does it for this week, tune it next week when we hit the more peaceful side of magic with Green/White. Hope you had fun and please leave any comments or suggestions.
Until next time,
This is your Captain speaking… We’re heading into the Red Zone!!!
P.S.
If this article it a little late this week it is because I usually write it on Tuesday, get it edited on Wednesday , and post it on Thursdays. But this past Tuesday I found out from my wife of 5 years that she was pregnant with my 2nd child! So I kinda forgot to write that day!
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